


while we are young men

by runandgo



Category: The West Wing
Genre: M/M, Post-Episode: s04e05 Debate Camp
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-31
Updated: 2017-10-31
Packaged: 2019-01-27 04:05:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,210
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12573320
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/runandgo/pseuds/runandgo
Summary: “You were good today. I mean, you’re twice as smart as Ritchie, but you dumbed it down well. You were a good opponent.”Josh and Sam talk about the past and the future.(spoilers for debate camp and events later in season 4)





	while we are young men

**Author's Note:**

> i just watched debate camp and wrote this instead of working on homework. hope you enjoy, i don't own, written past midnight, posted almost immediately after writing because i couldn't wait, and totally unbeta'd. title comes from that silly song that made josh do complete heart eyes at his sam.

_"Let us be merry, therefore while we are young men. After the joys of youth,  
after the pains of old age, the ground will have us.”_

It’s late and the moon is high in the October sky as Josh slips into their cabin. He’s not exactly quiet, still a little punch-drunk from the debate practice. It had gotten silly at the end there, but they’d made real progress, Sam thinks idly, chin resting on his hands. He’s laying flat-out on one of the camp beds, shirt discarded somewhere on the floor, the humid North Carolina night beading sweat on his torso. Josh wolf-whistles on his way over, taking his time, walking with a kind of ridiculous swagger. “Hey, there, hot stuff,” he grins. 

Sam stuffs his face into the pillow but can’t hide the smile that appears on his face. “You’re terrible with words when you’re like this, you know, you have absolutely no filter.” 

The bed creaks with Josh’s weight. “I don’t need a filter around you, Sam, not when you look like this.” 

Rolling on his side to face his boyfriend, Sam snorts. “You are a piece of work, you know that?” 

“Yeah, I’ve been told.” Josh looks at him, that one smile, and Sam’s legs turn to liquid. It’s a good thing he’s lying down. “Do you think we have a good chance of winning this? For real?” 

There’s a beat of silence, before Sam whispers, “Yeah, I do,” knocks softly on the oaken frame of the bed. 

Josh gets up, and Sam is too tired to move, can’t see what he’s doing until there’s a screeching and he realizes that he’s pushing the second bed over to meet Sam’s. With another whine of the springs, he flops down. “You don’t think it’s too -“ 

Sam cuts him off. “I think that come election day, the American people will realize who’s a few coins rattling around in a piggy bank and who’s the Federal Reserve.” 

Josh balls up his pillow and puts it behind his head, so they’re now lying on their sides facing each other, like they’re having a sleepover. His eyes rove the ceiling, eventually settling on the middle distance and sliding out of focus. “You were good today. I mean, you’re twice as smart as Ritchie, but you dumbed it down well. You were a good opponent.” 

“Well, it’s my job to be a few steps ahead of them, to head them off at the pass.” Sam’s barely paying attention to what he’s saying. Instead, he’s staring unabashedly at Josh, his tousled hair (he keeps running his hand through it), the way his t-shirt is old and stretched-out enough that his collarbone is visible. He looks like a photograph, a dark-edged picture from some other time. Sam wants to eat him alive, to kiss him till their mouths go numb. His heart thuds out _lucky, lucky, lucky_ like a chant. 

“Where’d you learn that song?” Josh asks, snapping back from his haze. 

“The camp one?” 

“Yeah.” 

“I went to Boy Scout camp for seven years when I was younger and I was a counselor for five years after that.” Sam closes his eyes and with the wet smell of the woods and the last of the crickets rustling outside, he can pretend he’s there. 

“Was this before or after Dungeons and Dragons camp?” Josh teases, grinning. He’s always grinning, like he knows what it does to Sam, like he loves making his heart seize up. 

“They overlapped, but we didn’t sing any songs there.” Sam’s quiet for a minute, then offers, “The summer after I graduated high school, when I was counseling, was the first time I ever hooked up with a guy.” 

Josh sits up rather fast. “At Boy Scout camp?” 

“We had a counselor’s retreat after the campers went home, mostly cleaning everything up for the winter. And, yeah, I hooked up with this guy, same age as me, we’d been going to this camp together for years.” 

“What happened to him?” Josh asks softly. 

Shrugging, Sam replies, “Not sure, think he works in Silicon Valley now. But you know what they say, you never forget your first, yada yada.” 

“Does the song remind you of him?” 

“Are you jealous?” Now it’s Sam’s turn to tease Josh, lightly, reaching out to brush a hand over his arm. “No, it makes me think of you, actually. He wasn’t - I don’t know. I wouldn’t describe it as being merry.” 

“Am I merry?” 

“You?” Sam laughs, almost silently. “Yes. You’re Puck, Josh, you’re Peter Pan. You smile like everyone around you is in on the joke.” 

There’s no response, except Josh meeting his eyes and pressing Sam’s hand to his mouth, a kiss like a thank you. He lies back down but this time he pulls Sam in and they stay like that, even though it’s sticky and sweaty in the hum of the humid night. 

Sam's open and honest with the late night and the company, turning his half-formed idea over in his mind until he can feel it tapping at his lips, waiting to be let out. He doesn’t want to break the quiet, so when he speaks it’s near a whisper. “Can I tell you something?” 

Josh’s head jerks forward - he’d almost been asleep. “Yeah, ‘course,” he mumbles, rubs his thumb deep into the tightened tissue of Sam’s shoulder. 

It’s another moment before Sam can air the thought, knowing it’ll sound ridiculous. “Don’t tell anyone, but if it comes to it, and I think it will, I might see if I can run in the California 47th.” 

Josh’s movements stop, and he looks down at his boyfriend. “How many steps ahead of this are you in your head, baby?” he asks, still a little slow, struggling to come back up. 

“I don’t know. I’m probably just being stupid. Just wanted to say it out loud,” Sam murmurs, and kisses Josh’s shoulder where his head was resting a few moments ago. 

“You could win,” Josh mumbles like he’s saying it to no one in particular. 

Sam tenses. “You think?” 

“Yeah.” 

“What about -“ 

“Sam. Don’t get into this, okay? You’re not even sure if it’ll happen. Just - go to sleep. We got an election to win in a month. We’ll deal with it tomorrow.” Eyes still closed, half in the world and half out of it, he pauses. “But you could win.” 

_You don’t have to tell anyone else,_ Sam thinks to himself drowsily as the heat of the room backs off, broken by the cool breeze that tells him diamond dewdrops are forming on the grass. _You could stop it there._ But saying it out loud, even just to Josh, was sealing it. If it happened, _if it happened,_ he would do it. 

“Can I tell you something?” Josh’s voice is unexpected and so quiet Sam might not have heard it if he hadn’t felt it vibrating in his chest. 

“Yeah,” he replies, heart fluttering for no particular reason. 

“I love you.” 

Even though it’s cliche, the smile that Sam finds on his mouth is so wide it feels like it’ll tear his face in two. “I love you too.” 

The moon cuts through the chink in the curtains like it’s sealing their promises.

**Author's Note:**

> comments and kudos are my life source, so if you liked this, please let me know! also, come hit me up on tumblr [@seaborns](seaborns.tumblr.com) because i'm constantly in search of other people who love these two idiots as much as i do. thanks for reading and have a great night/day/whatever time it is where you are <3


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